Ablaze are an Unsigned Australian ‘Rock’ Band based in Melbourne. On The 13th of December last year (2014), they released their single “THE HARD WAY”. Currently they are playing around Melbourne Promoting it.

Click Here To Visit “Ablaze” on Facebook!

My Thoughts On “Ablaze”???

by Tom Mceod

If I where to categorise them it would be a hard job to do. It would be easy just to call them a Rock Band. However, I can see many influences I within their sound. Influences perhaps from the greater musical era’s. From times when Musician’s where Musician’s, not Producers. Perhaps, even stemming back to 80’s Rock, Blues/ Rock, Even Country/Rock.

If you listen closely you might hear it too! The melodic and structured progression of the song, the strong Guitar Riff’s, solid backbeat of the Bass line and Drums, and the solid Rock sound that isn’t just a wall of noise!

It’s also very welcoming to hear a Vocalist that has feeling for the song he’s singing, and a voice with structure. Danny Slaviero’s voice is very welcoming! All these things are rare in today’s Rock Music Scene.

You can Currently buy their New Single “The Hard Way” on iTunes. But why not go to a gig of theirs and get it straight from the source, whilst enjoying the vibe that is Ablaze!

Leanne is well on her way to become Australia’s top female Independent Artist
in 2015. The sublime lyrical messages in her songs are almost as infectious as the rythms and her smooth voice. The apparent ease she delivers each song in a performance instantly captures her audience.

Leanne certainly delivers too, and loves her audiences. (It’s also obvious that the love is reciprocated!) Once on the stage, it’s all about having a good time with her friends. (Audience included) This just makes her performances all that more special. Leanne leaves no one behind, she takes the audience with her on every journey.

Leanne’s new CD “Pull Up Your Britches” is highly recommended! When I first met Leanne, (about 4 years ago) she was doing a Mini Tour of Brisbane, which led into some gig’s at “Soundwaves.” She had just released her “Are you there?” EP. To this day it gets high rotation in my playlist. Much deservedly so too, it’s a beautiful piece of work! “Pull Up Your Britches” Is Better!!! Hard to believe I know, but true. Such is her talent.

Currently Leanne has a sale in her online store for “Are You There?”
Normally it’s $15, however she is doing a clearance sale of, a Physical copy and a download for $10!

I’d advise anyone to buy both, “Are You There” and “Pull Up Your Britches” to get her entire recording back catalogue.

Click On The Picture To Download Leanne’s New CD – “Pull Up Your Britches” Now!

‘Bearing The Crown’ is Leanne’s First single From her new CD “Pull Up Your Britches”

Media, Musician’s and Fans Alike Are Loving It!!!

ABC RADIO

One of the best aspects of presenting a radio program is the opportunity it gives me to put music lovers and musicians together and there’s nothing quite so rewarding as the moment the phone rings at the station and someone says, “I loved that song.” I’ve had that experience many times when I’ve played the music of FNQ singer-songwriter Leanne Tennant. She’s one of those performers so at home in front of an audience that neither wants the show to end. – Richard Dinnen, ABC Far North Radio.

BILL CHAMBERS
Leanne Tennant is a serious Australian talent. Her lyrics express exactly what she feels and she sings with a unique voice that immediately grabs your attention. I’m a true believer. – Bill Chambers, The Hillbillykillers

Leanne’s 2nd single Is out soon!!! Here’s a Teaser! ‘Black Snake Calls’ (Trailer.)

Please meet Leanne Tennant

Just a few years into her creative career already blessed with highlights, Leanne is an artist who manages to mix vulnerability with an unusual strength. This is the feeling that runs through her album, Pull Up Your Britches, which blends a colourful tapestry of delicate moments met with a fiery backhand.

Recorded and mixed with Mark Myers at Big Sister Studios in Cairns, the album consists of a fine line up of musicians including, Bill Chambers – The Hillbillykillers, Jordan Ireland – The Middle East, Jack Venables – Osaka Punch and Simon McMenamin – The McMenamins. She has already had success with tracks Bearing The Crown and Black Snake Calls being played on Triple J.

Written as individual pieces and recorded with two separate line ups, the album has a distinct feel of genre bending.

Leanne has been writing songs and in love with music for as long as she can remember. She began playing the guitar in her teens and started performing publicly by busking in the subways of Brisbane before commencing gig life as soon as she left high school. She has played many festivals including Bigsound, Cairns Festival and Tamworth Country Music Festival and continues to be re-booked for events.

Leanne is very excited to release her debut album, Pull Up Your Britches. It’s a collection of songs which represents an artist who has grown and is not afraid to take risks. Pull Up Your Britches, also the first line in Horror-Country track, Boom Boom, represents a time to pick yourself up, move on and make change. This album has a clear indication of Leanne expanding on her current style yet growing into a whole new direction.

Leanne is currently putting together the finishing touches of her first music video to accompany Bearing The Crown. The clip is funded by Arts Council Queensland and Cairns Regional Council through a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF). (The Regional Arts Development Fund is Queensland Government initiative through Arts Queensland and Cairns Regional Council partnership to support local arts and culture.)

From the opening notes of Leanne Tennant’s breakthrough debut album Pull Up Your Britches, it’s immediately clear the Cairns singer-songwriter is onto a winner. Whether it’s jangly old-time jazz (Mrs Brown) sophisticated folk-pop (the lead single Bearing The Crown), bush ballands (7 Drunken Nights) or even a good ol’ murder ballad (Boom, Boom!), Pull Up Your Britches covers a lot of sonic ground (and crosses several eras) without so much as breaking a sweat. Throw some stellar guest appearances by (Bill Chambers, Jordan Ireland, etc) and production from Mark Myers (The Middle East), it’s definitely no surprise why Triple J is all over this. – Jesse Kuch

JIMI HOCKING

“We called into the ʻ12 barʼ during the Cairns blues festival. It was an incredible scene with a rocking band fronted by a sassy rockabilly gal called Leanne Tennant. She had the crowd eating out of her hand, and within minutes so were we!” – Jimi Hocking (the Screaming Jets & Jimi Hocking aka Jimi the Human)

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

(Some highlights)

Reaching my Pozible target to fund Pull Up Your Britches – 2014

Pull Up Your Britches launch @ Tanks Arts Centre – 2014

Accepted to perform on Balcony TV – 2014

Offered a spot on Sofar Sounds Sydney – 2014

Airlie Beach Music Festival – 2013

Cairns Blues Festival with Hatz & Cara – 2013

“Up Late” with You Am I @ Tanks Arts Centre – 2013

The QMusic Round & Round, Up & Down tour – 2013

Mission Evolve Festival – 2013 / 2011

Cairns Festival – 2012 / 2013 / 2014

BIGSOUND @ The Alhambra with Bill Chambers – 2012

Feature entry for QMusic Awards 2012 & 2013

Support Colin Hay “Men At Work” – 2012

The Lady Love Tour – 2012

Tamworth Music Festival – 2012

So Let’s Help Make This Leanne’s Year. I can highly recommend her to you.

Louie now lives in Australia and has released a number of new CD’s which can be found on his website www.louieshelton.com

This Sunday At The Ugly Sessions – Toowoomba Blues. Rock Chick Brooke and Master Stephen Denham will be passing amongst you with a tin asking for Donations to “The Haven Association Inc.” in Toowoomba.

Click On The Link To Go There Now!

The Haven provides stable supported accommodation for young people aged 16-18 yrs who may be homeless, and at risk.

“The Haven” Provides:-

Transitional Supported Accommodation for young people aged 16 to 18 yrs of age who are homeless, or at risk of being homeless.

Or homeless, due to being unable to live at home because of significant conflicts, or issues.

Whilst at ‘The Haven’, young people have the opportunity to learn the skills required to prepare themselves to live independently. Young residents MUST be committed to completing their education, training or employment and they will be supported to achieved this.

As ‘Graham Thompson’ (organiser of ‘The Ugly Sessions.’) says, “Help make these kids, The Have A Hopers”. They need the help of the Community. Your donation will help keep them safe and create effective real outcomes.

For more information about the Haven including referrals, donations and projects please contact us on

Ph: 46304181 or email us at haven_co@bigpond.net.au

Remember, These kid’s are ‘AT RISK’ and “The Haven” is a Non-Governmental Organisation.Therefore, it needs the help of the Toowoomba Community so desperately.

So Come along To The “Ugly Sessions -Toowoomba Blues” on Sunday the 7th of December at ‘The Norville Hotel’, Toowoomba from 4pm.

It’s a Family Day out, Great Food, and the best Music on the day in Queensland, from one of the world’s best Musicians.

Honestly, I am getting sick and tired of having to make post’s not only defending myself but, Musician’s when it comes to BASEQ.

Two day’s ago The Royal Mail Hotel, in Goodna, well their facebook page was closed down. So guess who they blamed? Yep, me!

The reply below was all I ever hoped to make on the subject, which I made on facebook.

THE ROYAL MAIL HOTEL,GOODNA, FACEBOOK, CLOSED DOWN FOR BREACH OF FACEBOOK PROTOCOL!
by Tom McLeod.

(Only Written In Reply To Unfounded Accusations. The only reply ever to be made on this subject)

The Royal Mail Hotel, Goodna Page has been closed down due to a breach of facebook protcol. For years Cath Butler has been running the Royal Mail page as a personal profile when it was supposedly set up to service a Business.

I am not responsible in any way for the closure of this page. Cath, it’s time to step up and own your disreputable actions. It is very sad that your actions have caused the loss of many Photo’s and much history about a Hotel that has long supported the Blues.

Cath Butler has been quoted as saying she is devasted! She and her friends? on her page have alluded to the possibility that I might have had something to do with it. She has also made a call out to all her friends to start bringing this fact to the attention of Music Groups.

Well Cath, it’s time to own the results of your own disreputable actions. There is no way I could have been responsible for this action as I have been blocked from the Royal Mail Page for years. When you are blocked, you can’t complain about a page you never see.

Facebook is currently cleaning up any pages they find to be dodgy. They have recognised the Royal Mail is in actual fact a Personal Profile (Cath’s) and has no Administrator and is representative of a Business.

The reason facebook is trying to force Businesses into their Business Page format is because as a personal profile it allows you to spy and gather personal information on those that friend your page.

Cath, is also quoted as saying that as a Business page you cannot invite people from your list to events, this is untrue. Having a business page gives you many more advantages over a Personal Profile.

Sadly Cath the loss of all these photo’s and memories is your’s alone, due to the fact that you were operating in breach of facebook protocol and it was bound to happen.

Now I thought THAT would be the end of THAT! Afterall, I was just forced to reply after being vilified. I really had no intention of taking it further, despite being publicly defamed on a Social Network on a page that I was blocked from.

If not for (quite) a few professionally minded Musician’s and Entertainers telling me, and sending me the photo snippets, I would never have known. They were disgusted, some saying, “This sort of thing is not healthy for the Music and Entertainment Industry.”

The Very Next Day The President Of BASEQ Posted An Apology.

An Apology To The Patron’s Of The Royal Mail.

It Never Occurred To her She Might Owe Me One!

The Following Was My Reply.

CATH BUTLER OWN’S HER OWN MISTAKE! (Finally) ACCEPTING HER RESONSIBILITY FOR BREACHING FACEBOOK POLICY CAUSING THE CLOSURE OF THE ROYAL MAIL HOTEL (PERSONAL) PAGE. by Tom McLeod

Cath Butler has finally owned the breach of Facebook Policy as her own and apologised to the patron’s of Royal Mail Hotel in Goodna. In doing so Cath open’s her long winded apology and excuses with the following statement;

“My sincere apologies to all the folk out there who were ‘friends’ with the Royal Mail facebook page and enjoyed the interaction that it brought.It is my fault that the page was not set up as a ‘business’ page according the the facebook police ‘rules.’ “

Which beg’s to question, why would she entertain a publicly visible thread spreading vilification of me, suggesting I was some how responsible.

At the time she was well aware of the reason why the page had been pulled. She was already talking to facebook about the issue at the by her own admission? In her own words;

“Yesterday when I attempted to log into the Mail’s page to update it I was meet with a message from facebook stating that I must change the name of the page to a ‘real’ person before I would be allowed to log in. After several attempts to manipulate the name of the page so it would somehow still say ‘Royal Mail’ I was unsuccessful and eventually locked out. Facebook required identity forms of various i.d. to be sent to them in order to verify that the Mail was a ‘real’ person and of course I couldn’t do that.”

I would not have responded in any way if she had not allowed a process of public vilification to occur on a publicly visible thread. Cath already had all the facts as to why the page was pulled.

But then, this is the way that Cath Butler covertly operates. Not only in this role as Event Manager of The Royal Mail Hotel in Goodna, but her conflicting role as the Blues Association of South East Queensland, President. (BASEQ) Which has had a history of vilifying and ignoring the efforts of the Musician’s they don’t favour. This behaviour is in direct conflict with the BASEQ Mission Statement to Support Blues Music throughout South East Queensland.

Again I state that I would not have RESPONDED at all, if this Public vilification, on a public thread had not taken place.

I find it tiresome that I have had to address this type of behaviour. This conduct is unprofessional and petty. It also does the Music Industry great harm.

The Way The President Of BASEQ (and The Events Manager of The Royal Mail Hotel) entertaining and encouraging public vilification and blaming me for the closure of the Royal Mail Page. When It was her fault all along.

After all this, the next day I was prepared to let it slide. It wasn’t really hurting me any. And it was making them just look vindictive and petty. (which isn’t far from the truth)

Afterall, BASEQ only has about 100 members and the Royal Mail is just a small pub in Goodna that has strong local support and get’s support from Tourist Traffic coming out of the Festivals around the area 6 months of the year. Hardly anyone is really aware of it.

I never go to their pages in any case. The President of BASEQ who run’s both pages is vindictive and destructive to the Industry.

So I, (as most Industry professional’s do) steer clear of it. True the Royal Mail does support the Blues, but it is selective dependent upon the President of BASEQ, and BASEQ have their favoured few!

In the past, (as a journalist) I have outed the President of BASEQ and her ‘Collective’ of friend’s for misdeed’s within the Industry. I guess she hold’s a grudge.

I must point out though, this is not an isolated incident to me alone. This is BASEQ’s (the committee) M.O.

For instance, the now BASEQ Committee is renowned for creating disharmony in the very same way that they have done to me, within their own Club. And they have been doing it for a long time. Since they have completely taken over, membership has dropped by two thirds.

One of their original victims was a past President who wrote to the membership and presented this letter for the Association to Archive in Canberra.

Coral Saunders letter to membership upon resigning BASEQ 10-3-2009

Dear Member,

By now I’m sure that you know that I have resigned from the President’s position and the Committee. The March edition of the Groove has an explanation for my resignation which was written by the Secretary. Unfortunately this explanation is untrue.

For this reason I felt that I needed to write this letter to clear my name as the Secretary has painted me as a selfish person who doesn’t give a toss about the Association or its members. This is also untrue.

While it is true that I am pursuing new ventures I have been doing this for a while it was not the reason for my resignation and BASEQ was still going to be a major part of my life. Please read the information below as it the truth and the real reason why I resigned from the job I was hoping to enjoy.

Reasons for my resignation

Basically Brisbane BASEQ seems not open to outsiders. Brisbane is driven by a political and factional scenethat has made it impossible for me to perform my role as President. A President’s role basically is to set the agenda for the meetings in accordance with proper procedure.

There would seem little point being President when I chair meetings and decisions are made, votes are taken, and then Old Guard committee members organise exactly what suits them. Decisions made at meetings in relation to serious issues such as liability insurance requirements, etc. have been discussed, minuted, and then ignored.

There are also powerful non committee forces at work here as well that made my role as President less than that of figure Head. To understand my decision, you need a little history.

Former committee members who resigned at last year’s AGM have more determination of the direction of the club than President. A closed little fraternity of Old School committee members have reduced BASEQ to an organisation where abuse and threats and the unravelling of peoples’ lives are the accepted norm.

The rot was obvious before I commenced my presidency. The association, before I arrived on scene, was essentially run on the whim of just a couple of individuals with Individual committee members determining much about who was to play at gigs and who was to beexcluded. The creation of a properly democratic and effective committee process had failed. Rather a culture within the committee developed that just ignored and even supported such non-committee-driven running of BASEQ.

The bands that would play, and other decisions made at meetings were essentially subject to the decisions made by one, and not many. This effectively meant that having a meeting to discuss and organise bands was a waste of time. When on two occasions I attempted to question such a band booking dictatorship, I was met with verbal abuse.

The first instance of this abuse occurred in my home where I was sworn at by a then-committee member while he was aggressively banging his fist on the table. Another committee member had to calm this committee member down so the meeting could resume in a normal and unabusive fashion.

A couple of weeks later such abuse occurred again but this time at the Dog and Parrot Hotel. This occasion had the same committee member threatening to “knock me down” (which is far worse than anything the Vice President did for which he was victimised). I was then disgusted with committee members’ failure to deal with such horrible abuse in a sensible fashion. It was even suggested by one committee member that it was Ok as the committee member concerned had been on the Committee for a couple of years and such history of service should mean we should overlook such behaviour. I feel that abuse is abuse, and that the friendships and personal loyalties to Old Guard committee member overshadowed addressing such bad behaviour.

The behaviour of other ex-committee members has also been extraordinarily difficult and undermining in nature. Even though they had resigned, this person sought to dictate the activities of the association. Their support for all things from the Old Guard is a great disappointment. Their continuing nasty behaviour and the running of the association behind the scenes despite his resignation and the personal vilification of my now-resigned Vice President Graham. In fact the behaviour of the current committee toward Graham can only be described as a witch hunt and has been devoid of all fairness and reasonableness. This process started long before Graham became Vice President, and was evident in attitude even before Graham entered the committee.

The same ex- committee member made unreasonable requests that were at worst completely unlawful. It was actually suggested that we should be handing over the minutes to the editor of The Groove so that the editor could publish what she saw relevant in our publication. To have co- operated with this request would have placed the club outside of the law, and certainly been a breach of the Incorporated Bodies Act.

It was also suggested by the Old Guard committee members that we should be obtaining a liquor licence for a fund raiser and then hand it on to a third party for them to control. This also was a discussion that myself and ex Vice President Graham suggested was a liability nightmare and certainly outside the constitutional mandate of the club. These requests were all entertained as reasonable and the fact that such things would have placed us outside the law was lost on the Old Guard. The prevailing attitude is that we can do what we want. It was then that my Vice president who was concerned with such ill-informed behaviour made suggestions that the club should acquire a copy of Incorporated Associations Manual from the Caxton legal centre.

Until this suggestion my Vice-President had been hounded down at meetings at any mention of issues legal. One current committee member who had been asked by Graham at my request to investigate our legal liabilities and possible insurance requirements effectively did no investigation and then reported ill-informed to the committee that as we are an incorporated body we are all protected. Graham’s own research and my subsequent request for advice from Andrew Baxter who is a practising solicitor and member of club has clearly demonstrated that this illusion is foolish.

There are many ways for our association to come unstuck legally. That is truly frightening when dealing with people who now, after Graham has acquired a copy of the legal manual have not even asked or enquired after a copy. Theory seems to be what we don’t know won’t hurt us.

A decision made by the committee based on this research was made that involved following the advice of Andrew Baxter in what insurances we would have to acquire for BASEQ to be protected. This minuted plan of action, like all other serious minuted plans of action, has been ignored and, to date, not followed through. However, one committee member who works for an insurance agent did take it upon himself, without seeking the legal advice that was decided upon at meeting, to get quotes.

The fact that no legal expertise was applied to the obtaining of these quotes was not of importance to the committee, except for Graham who raised the issue and suggested that committee decisions made were not being followed. The bottom line here is that this committee are so self interested that any suggestions from me as President or Graham as Vice President just became a source of conflict.

The mandate of BASEQ is to support the Blues. However, the committee itself seems happier to throw multiple bookings at bands that belong to committee members.

The ex-committee member has publically sought to gossip and run down my Vice President’s musical efforts which has resulted in both verbal and written complaints from members who have overheard such discussions. This has also led to the breakup of Graham’s band. Truly despicable behaviour.

This behaviour from Old Guard current and past committee members is what effectively determines the direction of this Association. Truly a disgusting process. One member of the current committee, after Graham resigned as Vice President due to upheaval in the Brisbane end of his band that could only be seen as individuals towing the gossip line, lied about the receiving of personal emails from Graham and then made what can only read as a personal threat towards Graham in writing, in regard to dealing with the alleged emails. When questioned and asked to produce the alleged emails, they could not produce more than a copy of an email that was sent to myself and the rest of committee claiming that it had been sent only to them and represented a personal affront.

Despite being made awarethat other committee members had the same correspondence, he then refused to correct the lie. The current committee then suggested that I should support this committee member in his endeavours. Effectively I had been asked to tow the line and allow the defaming allegations to go to bed in the official paper trail. Such behaviour had become intolerable. After my Vice President resigned, the current committee continued in their endeavours to vilify him. Such efforts even have involved the rewriting of the minutes from earlier meetings in an attempt to paint Graham as aggressive and destructive to the association after his resignation.

The rewriting of the minutes refers to an incident in which Graham found it difficult to cope with the process from one committee member to demean and trivialise his efforts as a musician. This process was very abusive as it included people demanding to know how much Graham earns from band jobs and how much he earns from day jobs. This was occurring as Graham had objected to being labelled an amateur band and suggested that it was not the role of the committee to be applying such labels.

The members involved then set out to support their labelling of Graham in a very rude and personal attack the details of which you will not find in the subsequent re written minutes. Indeed the rewriting of minutes about this event has completely ignored the abusive behaviour toward The Vice President by the current committee that had him speaking up on the issue, and has been used only as a tool to further damage his reputation.

Last year’s Committee was plagued with self interested musicians who saw their role as an excuse to overbook any band that they were attached to. This process was the subject of much complaint by one particular committee member. So I am now astounded that the same thingsare happening now from those that once complained. I argued hard for a rotating band list, I have suggested we should work through the list of club-affiliated bands as far as host bands for jams etc are concerned. I have been unable to make this happen as some committee members have been booked twice already this year. So BASEQ is not accessible for all. The personal attitudes of certain committee members heavily dictates which bands are included and which bands are ignored and in the case of my ex-Vice President, which bands are vilified.

Basically we have a small group of selfish and self interested individuals doing exactly what they please. There is no functioning committee. Decisions made at committee meetings are ignored and decisions by individuals put in to place. Indeed illegal things are in place and accepted practice.

One example is the fact that a now- resigned committee member was still in control of the membership several months after their resignation.

If this committee had even bothered to read the handbook acquired by me and the Vice President, they would realise the unlawful nature of that which they support. The club to date is still devoid of any necessary insurance. God forbid we have an incident involving glass at a club function.

I have followed the lead of my Vice President and I have also resigned from the committee.

Written by Coral Saunders.

10-3-2009

And Then In 2012 Again We See The Same Thing Happening Again!!! And, Again The President Writes A Resignation and Distributes It To The Members And The Association Archives In Canberra.

Matt Gleeson letter to membership upon resigning BASEQ 23-9-2012

Dear Members,

My name is Matt Gleeson and I am the current serving President of the Blues Association of South East Queensland (BASEQ). I have been on the BASEQ Committee since October 2008. I spent the first three years as Membership Co-ordinator, followed by a brief stint as Vice President, before being appointed to my current role. I have always had a strong passion for blues music and own a huge vinyl record collection. I love the camaraderie of being with like-minded people and enjoy supporting the musicians, as well as our members’ interests.

In December 2011, a BASEQ General Meeting was held. At this meeting Paulette Steele was President and I was Vice President. Towards the end of this meeting, a vote was held for the approval of a membership application from a person who had previously served a twelve month ban. The committee voted in favour of granting this person membership. What followed was a series of resignations from committee officers who were either not happy with the outcome or did not wish to deal with the fallout.

I was placed in a position as the sole office bearer (Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary all resigned), whereby I could either dissolve the association or resurrect it with legal assistance. I chose the latter option as I did not feel that our members should suffer as a result of the actions of persons formerly belonging to the BASEQ Committee.

Since this meeting was held in December 2011, BASEQ has been continuously undermined by two former committee members who cannot accept a committee decision to approve the aforementioned membership application. Their platform has been one of hatred, negativity and retribution to those individuals that they believe have wronged them.

I have become a target of ridicule and scorn by not only these two former committee members, but by others that share their views. I have stood back and watched this all unfold, without barely uttering a word. However, everyone has a right of reply and now is the time for me to exercise mine. I feel that I have single-handedly carried BASEQ from what seemed like a hopeless situation to an active one.

One of the aforementioned committee members is now asking for you to vote for them as President at the upcoming BASEQ Annual General Meeting (AGM). Obviously, the decision who you vote for is entirely yours. However, I would strongly urge you not to vote for a person who has displayed deplorable and unconscionable behaviour. I have had enough of being a whipping boy for a warring faction that only has their self-interests at heart.

They try to espouse the virtues of aspiring to be unified and having no personal agendas – what a joke! It is their grubby politics that has contributed to the current state of BASEQ, and they have a lot to answer for. I feel a great deal of sadness about having to air dirty laundry, but I also feel it is necessary to clear my name so that my integrity remains intact. Please refer attached documents, emails and Facebook correspondence.

Yours sincerely,

Matt Gleeson

23 September 2012

So you see this is not an isolated incident of petty, vindictive behaviour. In some cases it has come close to being criminal. Such petty behaviour is more annoying to me than anything else, their small world really has no effect upon me. It is really more tiresome that I find (in some cases such as this) that I have to reply at all and supply the evidence for you all so that you will be aware of their disruptive practices.

For Instance, the AMES facebook page currently has ‘Dallas Frasca’ in the icon. The background of the AMES page is a Poster supporting ROCK FOR MS in Adelaide a Charity Event.

Now, the poster that I took the ‘Dallas Frasca’ Photo from has (as all posters and posts I make) backlinks attached to itunes, facebook page, Web page, etc.) That is the unique thing about AMES, when AMES makes a post, it always backlinks it to the artists to take fans to their page and help promote artists and help them with their sales. Many likes on an artists page over the past 8 years, might well have come from AMES. I only promote Austalian Music, so if I am going to use a figure as the icon, it’s going to be an Australian Artist.

Now in the small petty mind of BASEQ they believe that I am misrepresenting myself. Not true! AMES is a business page about the Australian Music and Entertainment Scene. Dallas Frasca was the first “Poster Girl” on AMES when we started on myspace 8 years ago. Dallas has just come back from a successful European Tour and released new single. You can PRE-ORDER the new single, ‘You Are Beautiful‘ on iTunes HERE.

Many Musician’s have been in the AMES icon space on facebook. Dallas is just one of them. Still, somehow I am misrepresenting myself, as the President of BASEQ and The Assistant Secretary seem to think. By the way, the Assistant Secretary is married to the Vice-President of BASEQ, and she was the past President of BASEQ. The NOW President, was also the past Vice-President.

Any way, the Assistant Secretary seems to think I am hiding from people. Not so, I do have a Personal Profile page, as well as a Business page. Which is what The Royal Mail should have done to avoid facebook closing it down. Facebook did this as they want avoid any law suits they might come about through businesses gaining inside information about people by posing as a personal profile.

The post below was made by The Assistant Secretary of BASEQ, not only defaming me, but a Long time friend, former BASEQ Committee member, Drummer with ‘Phil Jones and The Unknown Blues Band’ (who were the first Australian Blues Band to hit the Charts in the ’60’s), has played with some of Australia’s most Legendary Musician’s, Wiley Reed, Phil Manning, Harry Brus, Kevin Borich, Graham Thompson, the list goes on…. But still, they choose to have a go at Dave who has paid his due’s and does not deserve to be disrespected in any way.

It annoy’s me actually, I have a lot of time for Dave. They can defame me all they want, that’s why I gave up my own Musical aspirations. I know that if people speak out about such thing’s, there are repercussion’s to expect. So I gave them up to be the middleman for the musician’s. Whenever there is something going wrong, they usually tell me. I don’t let other’s know where the information came from, and I follow up to make sure it’s factual. But still, small minded people like BASEQ that have no respect make baseless accusation’s without any proof and rely only on Chinese whispers for credibility.

Make your own mind up about BASEQ, It’s a good institution when run well. However, the current corruption and almost criminal actions of it’s Committee is destructive to the Music and Entertainment Industry.

There are a lot of “Fanmoters” in Brisbane denying Regional Musicians work within Brisbane. The Blues Association Of South East Queensland is filled to the brim with the collective of people who monopolise this.

Yesterday 2 of these “Fanmoters” were cross talking amongst themselves, trying to pull others into their deluded conclusions. Their Conclusion is that Musicians should only be paid a wage if they can draw a crowd!

But doesn’t any music of any kind draw a crowd? Look at the crap Commercial Radio and Sony are laying on us as (so called) music. Even Flume when winning all those aria’s didn’t expect to win. This is because as he admitted, “I’m not a musician, I’m producer.”

Of course to a degree they are right. However, if you can’t draw a crowd, are you really a musician. Perhaps you should consider a career change. You must be doing something wrong, maybe you can’t play your instrument?

Even then, that alone might not be the case, Music is a business and if you are playing it, you should learn your business so as you can remain in it.

Still, in another sense they are wrong again, it is like saying that just because you don’t hear any Australian Musicians on Radio there are no good Australian Musicians.

Because I have constantly been pointing out the corruption and mistakes over the years used by these “Fanmoters” I am their favourite target. They have formed a Trolling and Hacking community that concentrates on not just me, but others. They also have access to Government Data Bases.

I sound paranoid don’t I, don’t worry I think I do too. However they employ simpletons to do their dirty work and give them small rewards like, a Gig at The Queensland Festival of Blues, pseudo recognition as a reviewer and free access to gigs etc…

Why would these people do such things for such small rewards. Sadly, they all seek recognition and don’t get it. They attack me constantly with accusations of Misogyny, paedophilia, Mental Health issues, Police Arrests that have never happened, running Child Pornography pages on facebook, oh look the list goes on and on….

The truth of the matter is that there is a small group of largely unknown musicians playing around Brisbane who never Tour and rarely record just to keep a monopoly on the local gigs run through the one Agency all run out of the members of BASEQ. 5 Piece bands are playing 4 hour gigs for as little as $350! They undercut any and all that approach the Venues. This garauntee’s them more gigs a week, thus a sustainable wage. But as Musician’s shouldn’t they be promoting themselves? Part of that promotion is Touring, none of these Brisbane Musicians do it!

In the photo snaps, Roslyn Johnson, (Committee member for BASEQ handling membership) is telling Musicians to wake the FARK UP!!! it’s a new day in the music scene. What she puts forward as to how Bands are currently being handled is ridiculous.

Roslyn Johnson is also the Stalker who was texting me in the middle of the night every night for weeks. I never answered her. Her Friend Shannan Chaves is also part of this Troll Committee. Shannan is the Co-Lessee along with Paul Robinson of The New Globe Theatre.

You remember Shannan she is the foul mouthed little girl that rang me in the middle of the night and on the 3rd call I answered fearing my mother was dead. I let her rave on for an hour after that abusing me, telling me how many people hate me. (As if I care) Blah, Blah.

Anyway, I handed the telephone messages over to the Public Service and they investigated her for fraud and breach of the Public service code. The tape I posted to facebook and has since gone viral. Some smart Americans knowing how foul mouth young girls sell, changed it into a ring-tone and are now charging $5 a ring tone for it! I wish I had some of that action! lol 😉

Also down below are some very strange comments made by people who aren’t musicians, Paul Renton who likes to pretend he is one makes a comment there as well. Paul Renton never draws a crowd and his recent gig with Mojo Webb had to be cancelled for that very reason. No one wants to see an overweight talent-less red-neck with no grace up on stage, let alone hear them! So why is he playing in Brisbane? Here he is with another ordinary musician, Dane Andersen.

Then we get to Michele-Rose Boylan who is the popular crazed stalker who Devils Kiosk are the only ones to be able to get her into Court on the Telecommunications Law and win. Because the Telecommunications Law it hasn’t had any time to sort itself out yet, or have any precedents. Michele is certainly helping precedents to be made all by herself. Over 40 people are waiting for her to slip so they can get her into Court. The above Photo is of the “Real?” Michele-Rose Boylan. (She’s the person in the French maid outfit) Everyone avoid’s her in real life, outside of facebook, she simply does not exist! She is a self professed Prostitute that claim’s her story in the sex industry will make her millions! So she knows how these claims of paedophilia etc,.. have a tendency to make people think with a Lynch mob mentality. WOULD YOU TRUST THIS ELITE REVIEWER TO WRITE A REVIEW FOR YOU?

I waited for BASEQ to make a mistake , now Shannan Chaves might well be in Court soon on Federal Telecommunications Charges. She could be facing 4 years.

I have a lot more surprises, as well as Rolling Stone calling Michele-Rose Boylan Obviously mentally ill. Michele-Rose Boylan boasts of her affiliation with “Rolling Stone” Australia. They assure me otherwise, assuring me they have never published anything by her. I never thought otherwise myself. Here’s part of what Rolling Stone told me…

But The Question Remains Unsolved!
“Should Regional Musicians be paid a living wage to play in Brisbane?”

Related

When Triple J launched 30 years ago as 2JJ, Gayle Austin was there. She looks back at that first crazy year.

It started with a flashback, a reference to the possibilities of the ’60s. “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … Houston, we have lift-off” exploded into You Just Like Me ‘Cos I’m Good In Bed by Skyhooks. That Double J’s first song was Australian was our first big political statement. The fact that it was banned on commercial radio?

Well, things were about to change.

It was January 19, 1975, and it seemed all of Sydney was glued to the radio that day. Over at 2SM, the undisputed leading station for young people, DJ Charlie Fox couldn’t believe his ears: “The actual outrage of it. But we loved it. JJ was so radical, because 2SM at the time was playing American formats, which were 20 records over and over again, and that was it.”

Dan Arthur, a listener who later became a record company rep, says: “From day one, Double J was an incredible signifier of hope. Counter-culture at that stage in Australia had really been unfocused, and all of a sudden we had a crucial and central gathering point.”

The idea behind Double J was to set up a collective co-ordinated by Marius Webb and Ron Moss. They were given the job after a meeting with ABC management in October 1974 during which it was explained that the ABC had been given two licences, one of which was for a “youth-style station”. Webb recalls an ABC executive saying: “You’ll be on the air by January. Thank you very much, I’ve got another meeting.”

Word was the Whitlam government wanted to set the station up to woo young voters. We also heard that the ABC was worried about its audience dying off and wanted a station for young people who would grow up to be ABC listeners.

Towards the end of 1974, the first recruitment ads appeared in papers, stressing that a sense of the ridiculous was required. Producer Ted Robinson says: “There was a bit of concern about breaking down what was considered to be ‘an announcer’ in terms of finding ways other than the traditional approach.” Staff were chosen from across the country, with Webb and Moss ensuring a good mix of ABC and commercial people.

I heard about the new station in November, from a colleague at 2UW, where, as the co-ordinator of the talkback callers for John Laws, I had hit the glass ceiling. Radio in those days was like secret men’s business and I was the only woman who applied for an on-air position at Double J. I was given one midnight-to-dawn shift a week, a move so radical that I was the cause of much negative comment after our first survey of listeners. “Why do you have a woman on air? What do women know about music?”

Art attack: The Triple J exploding head symbol (top), and an early Double J poster.

On that first day, TV news cameras, photographers, well-wishers and staff crowded around what later became affectionately known as “The Bunker” – Studio 206 of the old ABC building in Forbes Street, Darlinghurst. A former bomb shelter, it was the perfect birthplace for the ABC’s alternative to Top 20 radio and the first Australian radio station to open in 43 years.

The location of the offices and production booths in William Street was ideal. We were down the road from the squatters, around the corner from the film-makers’ co-op, within walking distance of the inner city’s alternative community. We were in a building that already housed some of the most radical people working for the ABC: the feminists in the Women’s Unit and the radio current affairs show Lateline, headed by former Four Corners renegade Allan Ashbolt. They were generous with their advice on how to stay on the right side of the broadcasting guidelines and still push the barriers.

The aim of Double J was to put our own culture centre-stage. We wanted genuine dialogue with our listeners instead of talking at them in manufactured voices. Our station would be by young people for young people. We wanted to reject the cultural cringe that we had grown up with and which was still very much part of our national identity in 1975. The coffin had been nailed shut on the White Australia Policy only two years earlier.

Our brief was to provide an alternative to the mainstream, with a heavy emphasis on Australian content. We were to provide opportunities for live and recorded performances by young Australian musicians, and play (shock! horror!) album tracks from all the genres of music that weren’t being heard on commercial radio.

Colin Vercoe, who worked for two big record companies, CBS and Festival, before becoming one of Double J’s first music programmers, recalls going to radio stations in the early ’70s with American black music. “In those days it was the early disco stuff and if it was black they just wouldn’t play it.”

Chris Winter, Double J’s original on-air guru, recalls: “There was enormous breadth of music around at the time that one basically heard at parties, or if you scoured the new import stores, or you could read about it in import magazines, but you certainly couldn’t hear it on the radio.”

So we played everything we could get our hands on. We raided the ABC library for our back catalogue, played demo tapes from our listeners, brought records in from home, haunted the import stores and encouraged the ABC’s overseas correspondents to scour the back alleys of the capital cities around the world for treasures.

Double J’s eclectic playlist made the station appear radical, but it was in the talk area that the really radical work was done. Comedy acts such as Chuck Chunder and the Space Patrol, Captain Goodvibes, Nude Radio (Graham Bond and Rory O’Donoghue’s show, which launched Norman Gunston), Fred Dagg (aka John Clarke) and the legendary “anti-ads” informed future program-makers on how humour could be used on radio.

Our documentaries, under the guidance of first-class journalists and producers, made such an impact that at times they threatened to have us taken off the air. On February 23, the documentary The Ins and Outs of Love, by former 2SM producers Carl Tyson-Hall and Tony Poulsen, was aired to a barrage of press, religious and public criticism. We had dared speak about first sexual experiences and had apparently “breached community standards”.

A month later, after a Bulletin report by David McNicoll, the Broadcasting Control Board decided to talk to Aunty about her recalcitrant child. Webb spent a lot of his time in those first years shielding us from such attacks, arguing in this case that the station itself had received a request from a high school for the tape to help students in a personal development program.

It seemed we were always being threatened. In August, the NSW police commissioner, Fred Hanson, filed for $1 million in damages. He declared that a July broadcast claiming he had a financial interest in a gambling club near his home held him up to public hatred, ridicule and contempt. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court and in February 1976 he won the case. The terms were not disclosed but were rumoured to have run to tens of thousands of dollars.

One of my most bizarre memories of 1975 was discovering that our phones were tapped. We also noticed a van permanently parked out the front of the station with darkened windows and two men seated in the front. One of the news team approached them one night and asked who they were. Looking in the back of the van, he noticed a huge amount of recording equipment. The van disappeared the next day, but we still noticed strange clicks on the telephone whenever we rang out, and some of the more high-profile announcers noticed vans parked outside their homes. We were later told by a young person who worked at ASIO that there were files on all of us.

In that first year we had a station policy of access all areas. In early March, women took over the station as announcers to celebrate International Women’s Day. The listeners owned the station, too, and if they wanted to come to the meetings and join the debate, they were welcome. This attitude led to some interesting moments, such as when Holger Brockman’s shift was hijacked by three Aboriginal activists. They entered the studio and said they were armed and hijacking the station. Brockman said: “Oh, OK. Well, that’s the microphone there, and here you are, have my seat.” Brockman says they were really polite. “They said their bit, which took about five or 10 minutes, and then politely handed back to me – ‘And now back to Holger.’ Respectfully, like family.”

Two months after Double J launched, Bob Baeck, the general manager of 3XY, described it as “the lowest form of radio this country has produced”. However, by this time the station had already captured 5.4 per cent of the Sydney audience and 17 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds. It was quite a feat, considering the station’s faulty transmitter meant it could not be heard in many suburbs.

The reception issue was taken up with ABC boss Talbot Duckmanton and officials of the Broadcasting Control Board, but they refused to fix the transmitter. As a result, Double J repeatedly broadcast a recording of Bob Hudson singing Roll Over Duckmanton to the tune of Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven (“I’m writing this letter, going to mail it to Double J. There’s a crackle in my trannie and it just won’t go away. Roll over Duckmanton, get a better transmitter today”). In July, staff threatened to strike unless the transmitter was strengthened but the BCB refused to discuss the issue with station representatives.

As it turned out, we had to wait until we went to FM in 1980 before we got a reasonable transmitter, and that was only about half the strength of those for the new commercial stations 2Day and Triple M. It was only when we were forced to go national, beginning with Melbourne in October 1989, that we were in a position to demand better reception.

By the ’90s, ABC management regarded Triple J as a loose cannon that could sink the struggling ship and rethought its approach to the station.

In 1990, Barry Chapman was brought over from Triple M as general manager and, on August 24, all senior announcers, myself included, were told they would not be keeping their jobs. There was a passionate public response, with protesters holding a 105.7-hour vigil outside the station. An independent inquiry was held, but to no avail. Triple J had moved on to a new chapter and we could only hope the foundations we had built would be strong enough.

Today the Triple J National Youth Network has, arguably, the largest reach of any radio station in the country (apart from Radio National.) It broadcasts to all capital cities and most regional areas, providing a lifeline for Australia’s youth.

Gayle Austin worked at the Jays until the purge of 1990. She has a BA in media, communications and culture studies and is completing an MA (Hons) at Macquarie University. Her thesis is an analysis of Triple J’s first 16 years; feedback from readers would be appreciated to gaylecat@optusnet.com.au

CAN THE ABC’S JJJ FM RADIO NETWORK AND AUSTRALIA’S OTHER FORMALIZED MUSIC

INDUSTRY LOBBIES JUSTIFY TAKING OUR MONEY ?

IPA Review Vol. 4811, 1995

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Rock Around The Taxpayers’ Clock

by R.J. Stove.

Even as we sit here there undoubtedly exists, mouldering in the innards of some Dawkins created borstal, a PhD candidate hard at work on the doctoral thesis Rock Music Imagery As A Factor In Mid-1990s State And Federal Politics. Such a candidate will lack nothing in raw material. On the Monday morning after NSW’s recent election Warren, the Daily Telegraph Mirror cartoonist, emphasised the tally’s Rolling Stones connotations: he depicted both John Fahey and Bob Carr on stage as part of The Polling Drones, unanimously snarling “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” (though perhaps for Mr Fahey, given his ecstatic on-camera levitation at the 1993 Olympics announcement, Jumpin’ Jack Flash would have been a more appropriate ditty).

Across the Murray River, Jeff Kennett and Whatsisname Brumby — according to The Age on 23 March — vied with each other in piquant allusions to Mick Jagger’s Golden Treasury of English Verse. Mr Brumby, who failed to score an invitation to Mr Kennett’s private party for the Stones, complained that “You can’t always get what you want, but I think the Premier always gets what he wants.” For his part, Mr Kennett (clearly displaying the most morbid sensitivity to charges of excessive good taste) revealed that his all-rime Stones favourite was Satisfaction “because I can’t get any from the Opposition at the moment.

I try to do my best to keep the Parliament humming along, I often use the word ‘humping’ along.” Insisting — with as close an approximation to a straight face as his physiognomy will allow that the welcoming bash for Tyre-Tread Lips et al “would further Victoria’s trade relationship with the United Kingdom,” Mr Kennett managed to describe himself as “a rock and roll type of Premier who can move with the times.” Whether he considered this a matter for bragging or an admission of culpability remains uncertain.

Were Mr Kennett’s behaviour an isolated phenomenon it would not deserve the printer’s ink that has here been expended on it. But similar, and in several respects worse, demonstrations of intellectual slumming have been afforded us by the improbable figure of Tim Fischer. In a gesture which made one suspect (well, you know what those drought-stricken rural NSW summers are like) that failure to wear his trusty hat outdoors had afflicted him with sunstroke, Mr Fischer welcomed the launching on Australia Dayof 18 rural transmitters, which for the first time gave a nationwide basis to the ABC’s JJJ — formerly JJ — radio network.

Is the National Party so enslaved to vote-catching that JJJ, which could be relied upon to make any sincere National want to vomit after only 10 minutes’ exposure to it, now seems worth while ? Where is the electoral benefit to Mr Fischer in welcoming a wider audience for a station which, on the first day that Australia as a whole could tune into it, saw fit to broadcast the words “I want to f**k you like an animal”?

These are perfectly legitimate questions, one would have thought, to aim at defenders of a station that gobbles up $3.1 million in direct annual grants from the ABC (not to mention approximately $2 million that it spends per annum on using general ABC services, such as news reporting).

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AMATEURISM

The single most obvious characteristic of JJJ’s out-put, even when the obscenities are not flying thick and fast in all directions, is the — how shall we put it? — endearing technical amateurism so often present in its announcements. Years ago Timothy Garton-Ash, interviewing

Midwest agrarians for a Spectator article on American political attitudes, was roundly told by a farmer’s wife that “We’re hicks and we’re proud to be hick!”

The woman’s husband immediately stepped in: “What my good lady means is that we have a, uh, different kind of sophistication.” Similarly, there seems to be a widespread JJJ belief that the omission of all ums, ahs and stumbles from resident talking heads’ discourse would fatally compromise the “different kind of sophistication” which JJJ offers. Gaping holes of silence repeatedly occur between the end of a track and the back-announcement thereof. If you have adenoids, prepare to flaunt them now: this appears to be about the nearest that JJJ comes to providing speech instruction for on-air personnel. No attempt is made to discourage female disc-jockeys from the loathsome Australian habit of ending phrases with an upward glide: though it is odd to hear women who are obviously keen to brandish their feminist credentials manifesting a vocal tic which, more than any other, proclaims its sufferer’s irredeemable bimbo status. Nor is the effect any more pleasing when JJJ’s male disc-jockeys go in for it.

Besides, there is not merely the style of talking heads’ patter that has to be examined; there is, more crucially, the question of what these talking heads talk, in their occasionally amusing but predominantly inchoate way, about. A caveat is necessary at this stage. Large claims have been made for the purely musical splendours afforded to a waiting world by JJJ and JJJ alone.

The fact that these claims almost invariably come from JJJ itself is not automatically a reason to discount them. Writers like the present one –

whose musical taste buds were long ago annihilated by over-exposure to such poisons as Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Franck, Elgar and Puccini, to name but eight — will obviously find it uphill work to appreciate the deep spiritual awareness of JJJ-promoted Artistes like Deborah Conway, Offspring, and the Glowing Globals. So it is advisable, in a survey as brief as this, to concentrate upon non-musical factors: even if this emphasis involves devoting excessive attention to such feasts of authentic JJJ lyricism as…

Turn my head around (around, around, around)

Turn my head around (around. life onJJJ.”

Turn my head around (around, around, around)

Turn my head around (around, around, around)

Turn my head around (ooh, ooh. ooh)

Turn nay head around (ooh, ooh. ooh)

Turn nay head around (ooh, ooh. ooh)

Turn my head around (ooh. ooh, ooh)

and the tender ballad

When I Was A

Sperm I HadA Lot To Learn.

This latter triumph shows the poetic genius of a latter-day William MacGonagal: a•MacGonagal who, unlike the 19-century one, has been able to enrich his muse by prolonged exposure to … well, prolonged exposure to JJJ, actually. Among his masterpiece’s deathless couplers must be included the lines “Down the road I’ll wear my Adidas [pronounced, curiously, with the accent on the second syllable) I But for now, call me foetus.”

It was not to be expected that JJJ (or “The Jays”, to use the affectionate nickname chat staff employ in their promotions) would treat Easterride

with any greater consideration, let alone reverence, than any other season of the year. And sure enough, the station’s slogan for the Easter break was “The Resurrection Weekend: bringing the dead to life on JJJ.”

Imagine the howls of wrath that would issue from ABC apparatchiks if anyone showed this flippancy towards Aboriginal creeds. Yet JJJ’s policy of concentrating, over Easter, on deceased musicians— some of whom, like

Jim Morrison, have had daisies growing through their skulls for a quarter of a century — produced the unexpected benefit of keeping living musicians’ detritus to a minimum, even if it did entail talk-back radio segments of scarcely credible dementia.

One such segment consisted of a spiritual autobiography from an unbalanced sounding female caller to whom Jim Morrison constituted the only reason for existence. Frenzied with joy at having become bosom friends with a fellow Morrison addict, the unfortunate lass finished

her spiel by saying “Thanks, Jim, for finding me my cosmic mare.”

Another listener, calling herself Debbie, made what JJJ’s Catriona Rowntree described as “one of the most decadent calls we’ve ever received”: it turned out that she was ringing from her bathtub. Perhaps a Celine or a Nathaniel West could do justice to the mentality which inspires people to make phone calls like this. Lesser scribes, sooner than attempt so hopeless a task, will throw the towel in. (Debbie’s request was for the old Hot Chocolate 1970s minor hit You Sexy Thing, which has now been revived for Dumb and Dumber’s sound-track. Given the explicit nature of You Sexy Thing’s lyrics, it was disconcerting to hear Debbie dedicate the request to her father. One was reminded of the great scene in

Ferris Beuller’s Day Off where the school principal, spying on Ferris and his girlfriend canoodling after Ferris has attempted to pass her off as a member of his family, mutters “I see. It’s that sort of family.”)

Once Easter had finished, the normal bill of JJJ fare soon resumed, with such highlights as “Find my arsehole, brother” (this line from a “song” by an outfit called Bushes, with the suitably nudge-nudge-wink-wink title Every-thing’s In);

“I will come in 60 seconds, the request to her father. When we F**k we hear beats” (this from Overcome — terribly witty name, what? — by a certain Tricky); and the following piercing insight into the human condition, or such elements of the human condition as can be found in Balmain: She only comes when she’s on top Dressed me up in women’s clothes, Messed about in gender roles.

This wondrous poesy, by someone called James, bears the name Laid. Note that all three of these instances occurred within half an hour’s listening. It says a lot about the general intellectual level that by comparison, a minimalist diatribe like Third Eye’s single Gala — pretty much your standard heavy-breathing invocation to goddess worship and Things That Go Om In The Night — could seem almost attractive. JJJ justifies its carry-on by referring to its role as a standard-bearer for local groups, providing help to acts that would otherwise waste their sweetness on the desert air: or that would be condemned to night after night of committing purgatorial assaults upon boozers’ eardrums inner-city pubs.

What with JJJ programming’s sheer repetitiveness (the same material is apt to turn up at whatever times of the day or night one listens), this assertion is increasingly hard to substantiate. One might as well be back with the nostalgia-dominated commercial stations, which at least do not give themselves airs about the extent and wisdom of their patronage: except that even the most nauseating commercial stations are, on the

whole, reluctant to bandy the F-word around in prime time. Were JJJ’s bosses to start putting their own — as distinct from public — money where their mouths are, they would earn a modicum of reluctant respect.

But the money-mouth nexus is a concept so alien to the modern Australian mind in general, and to the modern socialist Australian mind in particular, as to be literally unthinkable: not repellent necessarily, just unthinkable. After all, we happen to be witnessing a more than usually determined drive for Federal funding by the local music industry, a drive which in late April (surprise surprise) took the form of a Canberra conference.

GOVERNMENT AS SAVIOUR

Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett, a long-established master of observations that combine conventional silly-clever rhetoric with his own fleeting

fax-naïveté, recently announced — to the regret of almost no-one who continues to possess operative auditory canals — that the Oils were going on an open-ended sabbatical. He was reported in The Daily Telegraph Mirror (27 April) as saying: “the gut question facing today’s music summit is whether we will have a real Australian music industry at all that young bands can aspire to be a part of, where expensive producers.

we have Australian recording studios, Australian film clip makers, Australian roadies, Australian equipment, all churning out [his words] music that’s distinctive and has value. You don’t have that unless governments are prepared to do everything within their power to assist.

“Not to be outdone, Michael Gudinski, of the appropriately named Mushroom Records, treated The Australian (28 April) to his somewhat shaky syntax: “Believe me, the Government is going to have to step in and (we’ll) have to see some radical changes because, unfortunately, the radio industry has … become so Americanised, it’s become so big money that you can’t expect commercial radio to do it all for you.” And you thought that estimate on this unblushing scale was confined to North Korea!

In a heartening confirmation of Philip Larikin’s epigram “Nothing is funnier than an upstaged revolutionary,” various summit spokesmen were

annoyed above all with JJJ for what they regarded as its inadequate zeal in broadcasting local content. These spokesmen proffered the idea that JJJ should be destroyed to make room for an alternative Australia-wide station: which in the fullness of time would, no doubt, be itself weighed in the local-content balance, be found wanting, and inspire calls for its destruction in favour of yet another Australia-wide station. So the wheel would turn once more.

What makes all this especially ludicrous is that — as David Brearley made clear in The Weekend Australian on 17-18 September last year — the explosion of home-studio recording hi-tech should have had exactly the same effect on Big Business and Big Government which home-office desktop-publishing technology should have had in the literary world: “Young players are more empowered today than ever before. Never has it been so easy or so inexpensive to access [sic] quality recording equipment without the stifling interference of music industry functionaries … “As the new kid on the arts block, Michael Lee could not be expected to know all this. But he and his [then] NSW counterpart Peter Collins, who has generously provided $20,000 for this weekend’s Rock Initiatives gabfest, should rake a few home truths on board before throwing too much of our money at the music industry dinosaur … the industry is an antiquated system of largely superseded studios, costly must-use session musicians and inappropriate but expensive producers.”

The similarity between “the music industry dinosaur” and gigantic Australian book-publishers, with their notorious make-work schemes for ensuring the State subsidised issue of illiterates’ drivel, is all too evident in passages like that last sentence. It is not merely a matter of lacking courage to weed our the inefficient; it is a matter of handing the inefficient large rewards. (Significantly, JJJ’s greatest popular success has been non-musical: the unpretentious low-tech duologues by Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson chat make up This Sporting Life, on Saturday afternoons. Equally significantly, Slaven and Nelson have survived their periodic transfers to commercial television without their native wit being impaired.)

More than ever, one wonders whether so-called free-market ideology has ever achieved or will ever achieve any of its stated aims. Australia is clearly not going to see any serious defiance of the music industry from any present or future Keating government; it must also discount the chances of defiance from the inhabitants of what Michael Barnard justly called “Her Majesty’s Permanent Opposition.”

Meanwhile — as with the Titanic, though at least that vessel was privately funded – the bands play on.

Dallas Frasca by Nicola Lautré

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PERFORMER INSURANCE

The author asserts his right to publish this information in the public interest
No responsibility is taken for consequences resulting from using any information contained herein

FACTS AND FALLACIES ABOUT INSURANCE FOR ENTERTAINERS

Many performers and musicians are completely unaware of their responsibilities and liabilities in their workplaces, Unfortunately, some entertainment industry employers and agents also do not have much of an idea of this and some have been demanding that performers take out certain types of insurance that in many cases is not required. The following information may be of assistance to all parties involved in the entertainment industry.

PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE

Since the advent of huge compensation payouts awarded in the courts, there has been much talk about performers having to take out public liability insurance. A lot of the information regarding this issue has just been wrong and many performers are compounding the problem by circulating misleading information. A number of agents in NSW are also doing the same and are also demanding that performers must be covered by their own public liability insurance.

I believe that the truth of the matter is very simple. Although self-employed people, such as sole traders and partnerships, should really take out public liability insurance just to protect themselves not only in the performing area but elsewhere, all venues that invite people onto their premises are legally liable for any damage or injury that is caused to those people.

ALL VENUES HAVE A DUTY OF CARE FOR EVERYBODY ON THEIR PREMISES

For example, if a performer is booked to perform at a club, this constitutes an invitation to enter the club’s premises, therefore the club must accept responsibility for the safety of that performer and the activities that he conducts. If any mishap should occur that involves that performer, then the club’s public liability insurance should cover such events and be liable for any compensation awarded. If by some chance the club does not have such insurance, then the club is still liable to compensate the victim from its assets. However if performers commit acts of negligence, then they can be found personally liable for damages and courts have made such rulings in the past.

THE BEST REASON FOR HAVING PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE

Probably the best reason for performers to hold public liability insurance is to cover them at times when they are not at venues and thus covered by them. For instance, if a performer was unloading his PA and musical equipment from his car onto the street outside a venue and a person fell over it and was injured, then that performer could be successfully sued for damages if a court found that the injury was caused by his negligence in creating an obstruction. Therefore to protect themselves at times when they are not at venues, performers would be very wise to hold public liability insurance.

PERFORMERS SHOULD AVOID HAZARDS

There are certain circumstances where performers should take extreme care so as not to invite personal liability. For instance, many performers operate curtain opening mechanisms at venues, which is quite commonplace. However if the entire curtain hardware collapsed and injured people on stage, if those performers were not specifically authorised to operate the curtain opening controls, but took it upon themselves to do so, then a court of law could easily find that they were liable to pay any damages resulting from such accidents. The best way for performers to avoid such problems is to not operate any equipment that is not actually their own.

In my opinion, if public liability insurance for performers can be obtained at a reasonable fee, then it is worthwhile to be covered in any respect, as in these days of enormous litigation costs and multimillion dollar payouts awarded by the courts, to face a massive compensation debt that would destroy any entertainer is just not worth risking. Furthermore such insurance will cover the performer in situations outside of venues, such as if a person were to be injured as a result of falling over a performer’s equipment when it was being unloaded on a public footpath.

Of course another good reason for performers carrying such insurance is that some venues may not book performers that do not have their own public liability insurance because they have been advised to do so. The ludicrous aspect of this is that if a claim is made for an injury suffered on venue premises because of the activity of a performer, even though the performer may have his own public liability insurance, this will not protect the venue against the claim being made against its own policy.

WORKERS COMPENSATION INSURANCE

This is an area where most performers are being misled by venues and agents that simply do not know the law or the requirements. Some agents now insist that all performers obtain workers compensation insurance when there is absolutely no legal or any other requirement to do so. Some venue consultants are even claiming that performers who are not Proprietary Limited companies cannot obtain such insurance and are trying to bill their venues an amount to cover a blanket workers compensation policy on every performer that they book. In my opinion this is ridiculous, totally unjustified and unnecessary. Furthermore it is not true that such insurance cannot be obtained by a private individual, as I have held such insurance when building my house for a period of nearly four years and I was not such a company, but merely a private owner-builder.

Here are the facts, taken straight from the NSW Government Workcover Subcontractor’s Statement. The first part of the statement is a declaration by the subcontractor, notifying a principal contractor (the employer) of his details and the type of contract work involved. This is very straightforward, however the rest of the declaration reveals the truth of a subcontractor’s liability for workers compensation insurance.

The subcontractor has to state that he has employed or engaged workers or subcontractors during the above period of this contract or if this is not the case, the subcontractor is an exempt employer for workers compensation purposes.

Note 6 on the back of the form states that for Workers Compensation purposes an exempt employer is an employer who pays less than $7500 annually, who does not employ an apprentice or trainee and is not a member of a group.

So it is easy to see that unless performers actually employ others on a payroll or engage other subcontractors, then they are not required to hold workers compensation insurance. Unfortunately some venues and their entertainment agents are misleading performers by insisting that they be covered by such insurance. Some agents have even tried to bill venues for a blanket workers compensation policy, when this is totally unnecessary.

My suggestion to performers is that if they do not employ workers or subcontractors and venue consultants demand that they hold workers compensation insurance, that such a demand be refused. The people making such a demand should be referred to the actual law and the requirements contained within. Pointing out Note 6 on the back of the Subcontractor’s Statement should be more than adequate. It is nonsensical and most unfair that some agents are intimidating performers into taking out expensive insurance when they do not require it.

There is a further requirement for subcontractors who employ workers to pay payroll tax and ensure that their employees are paid, however this is not relevant to those subcontractors without employees, such as most performers operating in NSW.

SOME AGENTS MISLEADING VENUES AND PERFORMERS

One interesting factor that has emerged is that some agents and venue consultants are claiming that they are holding workers compensation policies that cover the performers that they book. Workers compensation insurance covers employees, however the Entertainment Industry act specifically prohibits agents from being employers. Therefore any workers compensation policy held by those agents cannot possibly cover the performers they book, simply because those performers are not employees of those agents. Venues need to be aware of this.

SOME VENUES ARE USING COERCION BASED ON WRONG ADVICE

Even worse, some venues, having received erroneous advice about protecting themselves against liability, are now stating that performers who are sole traders or are in partnerships will only be booked for engagements if they become companies (Pty Ltd) and be employees of their own companies so they can legally obtain and be covered by workers compensation insurance. This is very unfair and completely unjustified, simply because such a situation would not absolve venues from their legal liability or duty of care to anybody on their premises. This sort of fallacious policy will deny many performers the opportunity to obtain engagements unless they submit to this ridiculous demand.

SICKNESS AND ACCIDENT INSURANCE

As with the other forms of insurance, some venue consultants and entertainment agents are demanding that performers take out sickness and accident insurance. This is not only unfair and unwarranted, but none of their business.

Sickness and accident insurance protects people from loss of earnings if they are incapacitated by an illness or accident. In the entertainment industry, whether a performer is covered by such insurance is no business of any agent. If a performer wishes to take the risk of income loss if injured or ill by not having sickness and accident insurance, this is entirely his own choice and does not affect any agent or club.

I believe that sickness or accident insurance is strictly a matter for the individual and should not be made a condition of being booked by an agent or venue. Such a demand is intrusive and unwarranted and should be refused.

CONCLUSIONS

I have come to the following conclusions as they relate to performers.

Public liability insurance is a good idea, although venues already carry such insurance and anybody on their premises is covered by it.

Workers compensation insurance is only required by those who have employees or engage other subcontractors. Most performers do not fall into this category, therefore workers compensation insurance is NOT REQUIRED for them.

Under the Entertainment Industry Act, entertainment agents and venue consultants are specifically prohibited from employing performers, therefore any workers compensation insurance that they have and claim to cover those performers is completely invalid and worthless.

Sickness and accident insurance is a matter of personal choice of the performer and absolutely no business of anybody else.

Agents and venues that make demands on performers, such as requiring them to take out insurance that they do not require by law should be informed of this and such demands be refused, as they are oppressive and unnecessary.

I sincerely hope that this has helped to clarify the whole insurance debate, but legal advice should be sought in any dispute.

The lava Lounge is a world wide video/music channel giving all unsigned artists the opportunity to be seen and heard. We currently have artist from all Genre around the world appearing on the Lava Lounge. We would love to see an artist who has been shown on the Lounge signed and have their career take off (When you win an award don’t forget to mention us lol).

The Lava Lounge has Radio and Record Labels watching from time to time so what are you waiting for ? We also have live streaming available so if you would like us to stream your gig live to the world just send your info to us and we will give you a quote. Agents, Management and Business in the industry are welcome to have an advert shown on the lounge as well, just contact us.

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